Profess
Pronunciation
- UK IPA: /pɹəˈfɛs/
- Rhymes: -ɛs
Origin
From Anglo-Norman professer, and its source, the participle stem of Latin profitērī, from pro- + fatērī ("to confess, acknowledge").
Full definition of profess
Verb
- (transitive) To administer the vows of a religious order to (someone); to admit to a religious order. (Chiefly in passive.) from 14th c.
- 2000, Butler's Lives of the Saints, p. 118:This swayed the balance decisively in Mary's favour, and she was professed on 8 September 1578.
- (reflexive) To declare oneself (to be something). from 16th c.
- 2011, Alex Needham, The Guardian, 9 Dec 2011:Kiefer professes himself amused by the fuss that ensued when he announced that he was buying the Mülheim-Kärlich reactor ....
- (ambitransitive) To declare; to assert, affirm. from 16th c.
- c. 1604, William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, First Folio 1623:He professes to haue receiued no sinister measure from his Iudge, but most willingly humbles himselfe to the determination of Iustice ...
- MiltonThe best and wisest of them all professed
To know this only, that he nothing knew. - 1974, ‘The Kansas Kickbacks’, Time, 11 Feb 1974:The Governor immediately professed that he knew nothing about the incident.
- 2013-06-07, Gary Younge, Hypocrisy lies at heart of Manning prosecution, WikiLeaks did not cause these uprisings but it certainly informed them. The dispatches revealed details of corruption and kleptocracy that many Tunisians suspected, …. They also exposed the blatant discrepancy between the west's professed values and actual foreign policies.
- (transitive) To make a claim (to be something), to lay claim to (a given quality, feeling etc.), often with connotations of insincerity. from 16th c.
- 2010, Hélène Mulholland, The Guardian, 28 Sep 2010:Ed Miliband professed ignorance of the comment when he was approached by the BBC later.
- (transitive) To declare one's adherence to (a religion, deity, principle etc.). from 16th c.
- 1983, Alexander Mcleish, The Frontier Peoples of India, Mittal Publications 1984, p. 122:The remainder of the population, about two-thirds, belongs to the Mongolian race and professes Buddhism.
- (transitive) To work as a professor of; to teach. from 16th c.
- 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essays, II.12:he was a Spaniard, who about two hundred yeeres since professed Physicke in Tholouse ....
- (transitive, now rare) To claim to have knowledge or understanding of (a given area of interest, subject matter). from 16th c.